![\"angry_buddhist_monk\"](\"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/angry_buddhist_monk.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nReacting to a quarrel between a Buddhist woman and an older Muslim male customer, Buddhist mobs\u2014with monks in their ranks\u2014armed with rocks, sticks, and machetes took to setting fire to the city\u2019s largest mosque, a Muslim school, Muslim orphanage, and scores of Muslim-owned shops.<\/p>\n
NPR reported<\/a> an account of Buddhist shop-owner Ma Sandar Soe, whose CD shop and recording studio, situated next to the mosque, were burnt to the ground along with it.<\/p>\n While recent outbreaks of Buddhist-led violence against Muslims have been associated with various disputes and rumors of violence, anti-Muslim\u2014and for that matter, anti-Indian\u2014racism has a long history stretching back to colonial times which is deeply enmeshed in Burmese culture and identity. (You can read more about that in my interview with Burmese dissident<\/a> Maung Zarni, conducted just hours after the rioting in Meiktila, Burma.)<\/p>\n It is only recently, however, that state powers and radical ultranationalist strains of Buddhism have compounded to create what has been called \u201cgenocide\u201d in the pages of Tricycle (Vol. XXII No. 3, spring 2013), many months before the conflict was deemed \u201cethnic cleansing\u201d by Human Rights Watch.<\/a> The term is still not widely used, however, as its deployment by any sovereign government or conglomeration of governments would require intervention. But most governments are not even willing to maintain trade sanctions in light of President Thein Sein’s economic and journalistic reforms, not to mention the opening up of the nation’s market, which has incited something of a feeding frenzy.<\/p>\n In that article Zarni uses the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment for the Crime of Genocide to make a case for using the term “genocide.” The convention defines genocide as the committing of any of five acts \u201cwith the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group,\u201d the fourth of which is \u201cImposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.\u201d At the time the article was written, Zarni was most likely referring to laws requiring Muslim couples to receive government approval to marry\u2014often through paying bribes. He might have also been referring to a two-child limit<\/a> that was written into law back in 1994, but has largely gone unenforced. This changed just days ago when officials in Rakhine State chose to enact the law, a decision met with an outcry from human rights groups and even eliciting criticism from Aung San Suu Kyi, who has remained for the most part silent in regard to the plight of the Rohingya.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is discriminatory and also violates human rights,\u201d the National League of Democracy leader told reporters on Monday.<\/a><\/p>\n The birth restriction makes Myanmar \u201cperhaps the only country in the world to level such a restriction against a particular religious group,\u201d reports Associated Press.<\/a> Ironically, the country most famous for its child-limiting policy, China, actually exempts ethnic minorities.<\/p>\n The recent policy is but an addition to a number of other restrictions imposed on this same group of Rohingya in western Burma. The movement of displaced Rohingya, who are denied\u00a0 citizenship despite inhabiting the land for generations, is severely restricted by state security that prevents them from even going to school or visiting the hospital. Doctors Without Borders<\/a> has reported several human rights concerns: \u201ctuberculosis patients unable to access the treatment they need to stay alive, and pregnant women dying unnecessarily because they have nowhere safe to deliver.”<\/p>\n State security forces moved Rohingya into refugee-like camps in Rakhine State with the pretense of protecting them from anti-Muslim violence, but at this point it is unclear whether the camps\u2019 fences and guards are there to keep attackers out or keep the Rohingya in.<\/p>\n Thousands of unregistered Rohingya Muslim refugees from Burma live next to the registered refugee camp at Kutupalong Refugee Camp, Bangladesh. Jonathan Saruk\/Getty images.<\/p><\/div>\n Across the Bay of Bengal, a Therevada Sri Lankan monk\u2014adopting what has become a common strategy among Tibetan Buddhist monks\u2014self-immolated in the street<\/a>. The monk, Ven. Indarathana, set himself on fire outside the Temple of the Tooth\u2014the holiest Buddhist shrine in the country\u2014in protest of the Muslim halal method of slaughtering animals.<\/p>\n Ven. Indarathana belonged to the Buddhist revivalist group Voice of Sinhala, a hardline Buddhist rights group. This could qualify the self-immolation as the first connected with an anti-Muslim organization. According to BBC correspondent<\/a> Charles Haviland, Sinhalese ultranationalist government ministers are praising the incident as \u201can act of self-sacrifice for the good of the country.\u201d<\/p>\n ___________________________<\/p>\n Alex Caring-Lobel,<\/i> works as the Editorial Assistant of the ‘Tricycle: The Buddhist Review magazine.’<\/i><\/p>\n<\/a>